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ST. LOUIS • A St. Louis woman was charged today with statutory rape, child molestation and sodomy after she was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in her neighborhood. Charged is Levetrea Dione Atkins, 36, of the 5700 block of Theodore Avenue in St. Louis. Court documents describe the boy as developmentally delayed.

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My name is Brendan. I'm an Obamaholic. It started back in November of 2000. I didn't really hate George W. Bush then, but I really liked Al Gore and thought he would be the kind of president who would care for my needs. When the Supreme Court stole the presidency from Al Gore, I went into a fit. I had trouble sleeping, and I would become angry with my cats for almost no reason. My employer noticed that my work productivity had slowed down, and they put me on light duty. With the help of my shop steward, I was...

Are the growing numbers of players planning to wear Jackie Robinson's No. 42 on Sunday too much of a good thing? Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter thinks so. "This is supposed to be an honor," Hunter told USA Today, "and just a handful of guys wearing the number. Now you've got entire teams doing it. I think we're killing the meaning. "It should be special wearing Jackie's number, not just because it looks cool," Hunter told the newspaper. "It kind of waters it down," Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia told USA Today. "I could see the Dodgers since that was...

Michael J. Devlin was charged today by federal authorities with four counts of the production of child pornography and two counts of transporting a minor across state lines for illegal activity. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said that the transportation charges both involve the same minor, identified only by the initial "S," who allegedly was transported once into Illinois and once into Arizona. The child pornography charges, going from October 2002 to January 2007, involve still photography and video photography, Hanaway said. Advertisement Devlin already faces charges in St. Louis County, Franklin County and Washington County in the 2002 abduction of...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Justin Morneau had some stiff competition when it came to earning American League Most Valuable Player honors, and that was just on his team. But while the Twins had multiple candidates for the league's award, Morneau came out on top Tuesday as he was announced as this year's American League MVP. Despite many people expecting Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter to win the award, Morneau's breakout season earned him the honor bestowed by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. All Morneau did in 2006 was to put together one of the best offensive seasons in Twins history. The first...

PHILADELPHIA -- The sheer force of Ryan Howard's gargantuan home runs cannot accurately be measured in speed or total distance, only by the gasps from those watching such a spectacle. The Baseball Writers Association of America collectively gasped, then stood and applauded on Monday, selecting the Phillies first baseman as the National League's Most Valuable Player. With 20 first-place votes and 12 second-place votes, Howard defeated last year's NL MVP, the Cardinals' Albert Pujols, by a total of 388 to 347. The Astros' Lance Berkman (230) and the Mets' Carlos Beltran (211) finished third and fourth, respectively. Howard becomes the...

BILOXI, Miss. — Leann Real promised her husband, an avid sports fan, that if they ever had a son he'd get to pick the name. ESPN Montana Real was born this week at Biloxi Regional Medical Center. Rusty Real, of D'Iberville, chose ESPN (pronounced Espen) after the sports network and Montana after football legend Joe Montana.

For a politician, is there such a thing as too much popularity? If there's any cloud over U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's seemingly charmed political life, it may be that one. With national political pundits now using words such as "messiah" in connection with the Chicago Democrat - and one former campaign opponent calling on him to run for president - some say he could ultimately be rising so fast and high in the American consciousness that he may end up with nowhere to go but down.

On September 11th, many people will be thinking about the attacks, and the way it has changed the world. In St Louis, there will be a March To The Arch to honor all those fallen Americans. The March will start at 11AM, at the corner of Woods Mill and Clayton. The 21 mile walk will finish at the Gateway Arch in downtown St Louis. This is the fourth year of the March, started in 2002 when a local businessman, Bo Drochelman, decided he had to take some action to remember the victims of the terrorist attack the year before. A...

According to a report in the New York Daily News, several sources within Major League Baseball expect a San Francisco grand jury to indict Giants slugger Barry Bonds, possibly even as early as next week. The senior sources said they have no inside information, but expect Bonds to be indicted before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence against him expires within the next couple of weeks. Several sources within MLB said they found plenty of damning information about Bonds in their own investigation, launched secretly a year before commissioner Bud Selig appointed former U.S. Senator George Mitchell in...

Erotic images elicit faster and stronger electrical responses in a woman's brain than do images of any other sort. The finding might not sound groundbreaking, but researchers did not expect such rapid responses to erotic images, which seem to involve different circuits than the processing of other images.

Rams broadcaster Jack Snow died on Monday, following a lengthy battle with a staph infection. Snow starred as a wide receiver when the Rams played in Los Angeles. This was the second time in two months Snow had been hospitalized because of the infection. The former Pro Bowl receiver stopped broadcasting Rams games in mid-November due to his illness. Snow ended his 11 year career as a player in 1975, and then became a member of Rams' management before joining the broadcast booth. Jack Snow was 62 years old.

The St. Louis archbishop informed the six board members of the parish that the priest they hired is also excommunicated from the Catholic church.

1,997 U.S. troops have already been killed in this Iraq war. At 7 p.m. on the day after this grim count reaches 2000, come to Grand and Lindell to express your sorrow and outrage that this illegal, immoral, reckless war goes on and on and on, long after every shred of a pretext has vanished. Bring your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends. Let's join voices across the nation, organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, American Friends Service Committee, and hundreds of other groups United for Peace and Justice,...

St. Louis Alderman Thomas E. Bauer became the latest victim in a surge of recall elections in the city Tuesday. Voters ousted the veteran Democrat, known for campaigning on the back of a donkey, in a special election, with 60 percent supporting the recall. He has five days to resign as alderman of the 24th Ward or he will automatically be removed from office.

More than a million people were jolted out of their weekend routines and spent a tense, hot Saturday preparing for a surprising Hurricane Katrina, which curved unexpectedly toward the low-lying city and is expected to make landfall Monday morning. Katrina was expected to approach the area as a Category 4 storm, with winds of 145 mph, and it could build to a top-of-the-chart Category 5 storm, with winds of 155 mph or higher, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said Saturday afternoon.

Tickets to see President Bush are a hot commodity. Hundreds of people spent hours in lines this morning in Pensacola and Niceville hoping to get a ticket to see President Bush next Tuesday. They came from all over the region, including Alabama and Mississippi, for a chance to see the President. George W. Bush will attend three Bush-Cheney Panhandle campaign rallies. The first is at the Pensacola Civic Center from 8-11 A.M. Tuesday, August 10th, and then at Okaloosa Walton College early Tuesday afternoon. The Bush campaign swing ends in Panama City with a rally Tuesday evening. Supporters waited patiently...

LONDON (AFP) - Male sperm counts have fallen by almost a third since 1989, with factors such as drinking and obesity possibly to blame, according to a British study. A survey of 7,500 men who attended the Aberdeen Fertility Centre in northern Scotland between 1989 and 2002 brought alarming findings, researchers said Monday. Analysis of sperm samples showed that in men with what is considered a "normal" concentration of sperm -- defined as over 20 million sperm per millilitre of semen -- the average sperm count fell by 29 percent. This "must cause some concern and needs to be explained",...

SWANTON, Ohio (AP) - A twin-engine jet crashed in flames Tuesday as it approached the Toledo airport, killing all three people on board, a sheriff said. The Falcon 20 turbo jet, which had left from Traverse City, Mich., went down about 2 p.m. in a nature preserve a mile southwest of the airport. The flames were extinguished about two hours later. Killed were Dave Davenport, 40, of Elmore, Ohio; Will Forshay, 37, of Maumee, Ohio; and Wallis Bouldin, 34, of Louisville, Ky., the State Highway Patrol said. The three were employees of Grand Aire Inc., a charter company based in...